It happens all the time. The Slimehead became the Orange Roughy, and the Patagonian Toothfish became the Chilean Sea Bass. In that great old movie King Rat, the "hero" sells rat meat for food, calling it "mouse deer."

The Federal Trade Commission has weighed in on a fur fight over what to call garments made from a fuzzy animal with rings around its eyes that is a distant relative of dogs. Is it an Asiatic Raccoon? That's the term that's been in use since 1961 and is preferred by industry groups. Or should it b...

But he's the author. He, not you, decides what to write. What's important is that it be amusing, provocative or in some other way worthy of attention. Not that it meet a someone else's lawerly fault-finding (and I'm a lawyer).

The Parable Once upon a time there was a primitive tribe that hunted and gathered in a verdant forest in a temperate clime. I call them a "tribe" but that name may mislead if it suggests some rigorous form of social organization. In fact, the group was about as un-organized as it is possi...